


My Brother's Keeper

by tlea



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Brother Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4343363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tlea/pseuds/tlea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt:  Gray is injured during the last battle between the I-rex and T-rex. When their parents find him with Claire and Owen later, they immediately start blaming Zach for running away with Gray, for not protecting him and being a general nuisance once again. Gray proves them wrong by telling them how he saved them in the gyrosphere, with fixing the jeep, with the pterodactyls then later with the raptors. And finally with the I-rex. They don’t know anything, they weren’t around, they never are anyway</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Brother's Keeper

      Gray liked adrenaline. It kept him moving and alert. It also made sure he wasn’t aware of the gash on his right side, which was slowly spewing blood. He hadn’t even felt the pain at first. He didn’t even know it was there until Zach hugged him enthusiastically and pulled back with blood all over his arms.

      Zach’s eyes widened as he gaped at the blood on his arms and then scanned Gray’s body. His eyes landed on a dark red spot on Gray’s side. “ Oh my god.” Gray was suddenly aware of the stinging pain, and yelped loudly when he went to touch it. His eyes met Zach’s, pleading for him to do something.

       He’s gonna…” Zach mumbled, staring at the blood that had now seeped down Gray’s leg. He couldn’t think straight, his only thoughts being _he’s not gonna die, he won’t die, he can’t die._ “He’s gonna bleed out. You have to do something!”  Owen and Claire immediately started working, shouting things to each other, at Zach. But Zach could hardly pay attention. He didn’t care, they just had to help Gray.

        It was all a blur. Suddenly they were with the rest of the injured crowd, surrounded by medics. Several of them rushed over to Gray when they saw the gash on his side. They seemed to be working too slow, and Zach hadn’t realized he had been screaming at them to fix him. He wanted to stay right next to Gray, he _had_ to be right next to Gray, but people kept pushing him out of the way. Owen had come up to him, and Zach shouted at him, too. He had to leave until they were done. He was greeted twenty minutes later by a tired looking Claire who told him they had stopped Gray’s bleeding, at least for the time being.

       Zach had been allowed to rush over to Gray, and put his arm around him. He kept repeating, “ You’re fine, you’re fine.” And Gray only smiled and leaned into his side, mumbling, “ I know.” They stayed like that for a while until a medic came back and had to check back up on Gray. Zach had sat in a chair directly across from Gray, and Owen had told him everything was okay.

      Then their parents arrived.  Zach spotted his mom first, standing off in the crowd. When they locked eyes she started crying. She knew about Gray, then.  They both rushed over to Gray first. Zach had guessed that they would, but he had hoped at least one of them would have acknowledged him. He watched as his mom practically sobbed over an embarrassed looking Gray, pleading that he was fine.

     Suddenly both of his parents turned to look at him. He had been expecting them to start off with some worried statement, nothing as dramatic as Gray’s, but at least a hello. He hadn’t expected to hear his mom snap, “ What the hell were you thinking!”

     Zach immediately opened his mouth in confusion and Gray sat up straighter at his moms surprising remark. “ I..what?” Zach replied confused as he looked between his angry mother and father.

     “ You were supposed to look out for him!” Their dad waved his arm over at Gray, and Zach sunk down lower into his chair. “ How could you let him get hurt?”

      Zach was so shocked, he couldn’t say anything. They were wrong..he had done nothing but protect Gray.

     "Why couldn’t you just follow the rules for once? If you hadn’t run off, Gray wouldn’t have gotten hurt! God, can you ever stop to think about anyone besides yourself?”

     “Mom!” Gray shouted, angry and surprised at his moms hurtful words. Owen tried his best to intervene, but Karen had came prepared. Gray looked at Zach with worried eyes, and Zach had responded with a loud huff and a shake of his head.

      “You don’t have to protect him, Gray. We all know he’s the reason you got hurt,” Her shouting got lower, and her voice cracked, “ I just knew this would happen. I knew he wouldn’t take care of you.. I should’ve known not to send you on this trip.”  Zach was close to hysterics and Gray had had enough as he looked at his angry parents and at Zach; Zach, his big brother who had stopped him from getting killed about five hundred times.

     “ You guys don’t know anything!” Gray yelled, deciding that someone had to stick up for Zach. “ When we were in the Gyrosphere when the Indominous first attacked us, I was frozen. My mind completely blanked. I couldn’t do anything, but you know who did do something? Zach. He’s the one who undid our seat belts and pushed me away from the Indominous. He’s the one who made sure I jumped and stayed under!” Gray was raging, and had no intentions of shutting up.  “ Zach is the one who started the jeep up and drove us back to the park. Do you really think I could’ve replaced a car battery by myself?” Zach chuckled lowly as Gray continued on, “ Then the pterodactyls attacked. I was about to be grabbed by one when Zach pulled me back. Not Claire or Owen, but _Zach_.”

     “ Okay, we-“ Their dad tried to cut Gray off, but he was met with a hard glare. Gray looked at his mom and clenched his jaw before he continued.

     “ No! You’re going to hear everything Zach did for me. One of the Indominous claws got caught on my pack and it was pulling me away from Zach and Owen. If Zach hadn’t broken the strap, I wouldn’t be here. You should be happy I’m hurt, because it means that I’m here and alive. You should be happy Zach’s alive!” His voice had risen and his mom’s guilty expression did not go unnoticed. “ Did you know what the best thing he did was? He kept telling me ‘everything is fine’, that we were safe. I knew it was to make me feel better, that it wasn’t true, but he still said it. Over and over again. Because even though he was terrified, he would do anything to make sure I wasn’t.”

     “Gray you can stop,” Karen pleaded, looking slightly embarrassed. Gray’s yelling had gathered a small crowd and several eyes were on them. Owen did his best to shoo them away as Gray continued his rant.

      “ Why? Because you know I’m right? I don’t know where you and dad get this idea that Zach is some terrible, mean big brother. He did nothing but protect me, but I guess you wouldn’t know, since you weren’t there. Maybe that’s why you think all of this about Zach. Because you are never here. If you were around more than maybe you would realize that Zach isn’t always a terrible person to me, and that me getting hurt, was _not_ his fault! It was a tragic accident, and that’s all.” Gray huffed loudly and pushed past his parents to sit next to Zach.

       Karen and Scott were at a loss for words as they gaped at their two sons. Gray had put his head under Zach’s arm and Zach was avoiding eye contact with the both of them.

       “Gray,” Karen began, slowly. “ I’m..” She looked over at Scott, “ We’re sorry. We didn’t…we were just worried, that’s all.

       “ That’s bullshit, mom,” Zach suddenly spoke out, his voice laced with rage. “ A worried parent wouldn’t tell their son what a terrible brother he is, and how he supposedly feels about his other sibling. I get that you were worried about Gray, but let’s make this clear: I have _always_ cared about Gray. But like Gray said, you wouldn’t know that since you’re hardly around. Yeah, I’m a douche to him sometimes, but that’s what brothers do. And you want to know something else? I was worried, too. Terrified, actually, that at any second I would turn around and Gray wouldn’t be there. That somehow during the split-second I couldn’t see him, a dinosaur would come and claw him away. I was terrified, and I still am. Don’t say fucking sorry to him, say it to me,”  Zach was standing and his hands were clenched as he tried to regain his composure.

        Karen had paled and Scott looked appalled. “ Zach, we’re so sorry. We had no right to say what we did,” Scott stuttered, trying to find the right words, “  We see now that you really care for your brother.”

        Zach could hear the waver in their voices, the way they stuttered mid-sentence. They didn’t really mean what they were saying. They were simply shocked and slightly angry and wanted to please the eldest brother, so they said what they thought he needed to hear.  Noticing Gray was hunched over and the way his eyes looked at Zach wearily, he decided to end the discussion.

       “ Okay.” He replied as he moved over to Gray. They smiled at each other and sat in silence, staring down their parents. That was the end of the argument.

        They didn’t talk to their parents for weeks.  Karen would try to start a conversation but they would brush her off and go into another room. They only talked to each other, because they were the only ones who understood. They were there, and their parents weren’t. Simple as that.


End file.
